MEDITATIONS no.7

Your training should make you stronger, faster, and harder to kill.

Remember when this newsletter was about philosophy, fitness, and post-industrial civilization?

Miss it? Me too.

The last few posts have been pretty heavy on the philosophy and post-industrial civilization and a few kind readers asked me why I haven’t written about lifting/training in a while. I will be honest – I haven’t written much about training because I have been so consumed with work and getting a daily hour in the gym that I haven’t yet had time to stop and codify whatever thoughts I might have on training.

Weekend came and went. This post was supposed to be about exiting modernity… I didn’t know quite how to connect the strands of thought. I’d rather not post than release something half-baked. So it is that I find myself here on a Tuesday night, struggling to find the right way to say what it is I need to say.

It is as good a time as any to take stock of where I’m at in my training, and where I’m going.

1. In matters of training, we have to operate from first principles.

This is so there is a deep and ingrained understanding of what every single training session, every single movement, every single rep is for. The problem with most trainees is that there is too much/too little intensity, movement choices make no sense, there is not much overarching sense of practicality in programming.

The list goes on.

The effect of this lack of operating from first principles is that you will create a body that does not do what you want it to do, or is not operating/functioning within its zone of proximal development (cribbing this from Vygotsky, an honorary bro).

So a good place to start is to get out a Post-It note or 3x5 index card, and write down what you want your body to be able to do. These should be within the realm of reason, but not so conservative that it is immediately adjacent to where you’re currently at.

Here are a few of mine:

• Lift heavy, run fast.

• Strong joints and tendons.

• LONGEVITY. I want to be able to train into my 60s, 70s and beyond.

2. There is something so immediately OBVIOUS, so painfully BRILLIANT, about the first maxim I mentioned: Lift heavy, run fast.

When I first encountered it, it was as if I had been struck by lightning. “Duh, of course I should be able to lift heavy and run fast!”

The reasoning for this is simple enough: It is ideal and desirable to be able to exert and project as much force as humanly possible, in order to overcome and defeat threats, while being agile and fast enough to outrun any threats that you cannot physically defeat. It appears to be the case that the classical hero’s physique of antiquity we see in bronze and stone statuary exemplifies this combination of muscular strength and cardiovascular capacity.

So back to the question of what does it look like to LIFT HEAVY & RUN FAST: I believe Adam Klink did something ridiculously awesome to this effect. The guy squatted 500lbs and ran a 5 minute mile in the same day.

This is, in my eyes, eminently practical and results from functional training. YMMV.

Am I close to achieving this feat? Not even remotely. But the compass is set and the drive is there, so it’s just a matter of showing up, training with mindful intent and maximum intensity, and not sabotaging myself outside the gym.

My back squat is currently 113kgs (250lbs), and I run a 9-minute mile. I take approximately 50 minutes to complete an unweighted Murph.

I say this not to denigrate myself or anything so absurd. I’m posting this publicly to keep myself accountable. I want myself in a year to know, and I want you to ask me, (if you are so inclined) how much progress I have made. The operative assumption being that it is not a question of whether or not I will make progress, it’s how much progress I can claw back from the grasps of Entropy.

3. Beware the man in the gym who trains without pre-workout or music. He’s training to kill somebody; that man’s training to avenge his family’s murder.

Bit extreme and typical of the rhetoric surrounding training on Twitter, but let’s pause and consider the ways in which this makes sense.

Majority of trainees in the modern gym are soft and coddled in the sense that a very specific set of conditions have to be met in order for them to train with any actual intensity. The music needs to be at the right volume, it has to be the right playlist, they have to be at that sweet spot between meals, they have to have had 8 hours of sleep, they have to take their pre-workout drink 30 minutes before starting, they have to take their intra-workout BCAAs, they have to consume 30 grams of protein within the anabolic window/30 minutes of finishing the workout, their spotter has to be there on bench day, need to microdose kratom or sniff ammonia before trying for a new 1 rep max. List goes on and on and on until the heat death of the universe.

What if… you took it all away… and started just training when you are uncomfortable? Need to put on Avenged Sevenfold before doing deadlifts? Nah, here’s some Michael Jackson instead. Like to train when it’s cool? Train at noon in summer where the gym is warmer than your sweat. Need to have a meal before training? Get through a workout completely fasted.

You should be able to train and perform at maximal intensity even if you have no control over your mood, no control over your immediate surroundings.

Why? Just cause. It’ll make you stronger, faster, and harder to kill.

And anything that makes you all 3 is never a bad thing.

I am the first to practice what I preach. Over the past 10 months I conditioned myself to train while listening to all sorts of random things: jazz, classical music, podcasts, Mongolian throat singing, etc.

I don’t use pre-workout either. Why would I want to tank my endocrine system in regular training and reduce the efficacy of this stuff when I might have real use for it at an actual event? I have seen so many young people taking C4 or similar right before a HIIT class or conventional lifting day.

Dude, just have a shot of espresso with a sprinkle of sea salt and get ready to bring the rain.